Page 55 of Under Cover
Does this feel good?
Yeah.
This?
Tickles!
More of this, papi—I need to hear you laugh.
And he did, so much. He laughed more with Calix Garcia than he had with any friend, any lover, he’d ever known.
And when their climax came, Calix’s back arching as Crosby moved above him, the look of freedom, of trust on his face, was everything Judson Crosby had ever needed in his life and had never dared to hope for.
Sometime in the night, after a dinner of toast and eggs and a dozy evening of watching TV in bed, they fell asleep. Calix backed into Crosby’s big spoon like he’d been everything missing from Crosby’s arms, and Crosby tried to pull him closer, to bond souls like they’d bonded bodies.
At 2:00 a.m. his phone rang. It was Toby, his voice pitched to panic.
“I’m sorry, man. They put me in the jail. I… they say they’ll put me back. There were no drugs, I swear, but this McEnany guy, he pulled a baggie out of hisass—”
His phone buzzed, so he put it on speaker so Calix could hear and he could look at the picture texted to him from a number he didn’t recognize.
It was Toby, distorted features made even more distorted by bruises on his face, cuts on his lips, and an obviously broken nose.
Crosby sat up, blood cold in his veins. “Is he there, Toby?”
“Yeah.”
“You put him on.”
McEnany’s voice had a smug quality—just like it had every day they’d worked together for a year and a half.
“So, Crosby,” he said, like they were sitting at the conference table. “Ready to play poker now?”
Empty Nest
“YOU ABSOLUTELYcannot,” Garcia said, his panic beyond being a bird in his chest. It was a fucking pterodactyl, a T-Rex, and it was going to crush him and leave his body twitching on the ground.
“I don’t have a choice,” Crosby said, sliding into his jeans and finding his gun belt. Garcia had a safe for firearms—he’d shown Crosby where it was when they’d been moving him in. Crosby was on the fingerprint lock and the whole nine yards, but Garcia wished right now that he hadn’t been. That he’d have to ask Garcia for his service piece like he was a guest and not… oh God. A resident. He fuckinglivedhere in Garcia’s house. Yeah, it was for two and a half nights and two days, but that was enough—his DNA was imprinted there, on Garcia’s sheets, in his skin.
“But Crosby, he wants to kill you!” Garcia burst out, beyond being tactful. “That man wants you to report for a bullshit cover operation so he can use your dead body to cover his ass!”
Crosby paused in the act of shoving his shirt in his pants. He stared at Garcia, agony in his eyes, and nodded. “Yeah. Yeah, you’re right. I can’t argue that. But before I get dead, he wants to use me. And while he’s using me, we’ll be using him right back.”
Garcia dragged a hit of oxygen into his lungs. “We?” God, such a hopeful word.
“Yeah. Yeah, we. Look, you think I want you to go fetch Toby from the precinct and then let me waltz into the night? Are you fuckin’ kidding? You’re going to call Harding and—”
“What am I going to tell him?” Garcia asked bitterly, the panic still raw in his chest. “That your old boss wants you to go undercover with the Sons of the Blood so you can get him back in with them?”
Crosby nodded, resuming his dress routine, and Garcia contemplated smashing him over the head with the zombie garden gnome they’d left on the kitchen table. At least that way he’d be safe—unconscious, but safe.
“That’s about it,” Crosby said. “But first, get Toby the fuck out of there. Call Harding on the way if you have to, but use your scrambler, and I’m serious, man. Either they’re going to turn Toby loose the minute I show up at McEnany’s meet or they’re not. If they don’t, they’re throwing him back in the pond, where he’ll die, and if they do, they’re going to let him loose into the streets and put him through a meat grinder. Either way he’s fucked. If there’s not people there for Toby, I don’t see him walking away alive from this. I told McEnany I’d have a friend run him down at the precinct and make sure he was okay, so I think the action is gonna be on the streets, but man, if McEnany’s serious about trying to propagate the Sons of the Blood from the inside, I don’t trust him not to take our boy out in the jailhouse either.” Crosby gulped in a breath, and Garcia had to close his eyes against his worry. Toby Trotter, the sweet, almost shy little man who’d been Crosby’s one friend for over a year. As Crosby had said—repeatedly—it wasn’t Trotter’s fault his place wasn’t a good match for Crosby’s hours. In the last few days, Garcia had really begun to see why Crosby had hung in there so long with the guy.
A friend that tight? That wasn’t anything to sneeze at.
“God, Judson—”
“You heard his voice on the phone,” Crosby said, all his frantic activity halting for the moment. “He was so scared.”